Re: How old were you when you started to get interest in fragrances?

I'm 29 now, and I was about 19 when it all started. I would smell Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male on many of the guys at my school, and I loved the smell, but I had no idea what the cologne was. One day, I sat next to a guy who I thought was wearing the unknown cologne, so I asked him what it was. Joop Pour Homme. So I bought it. Before I finished that bottle, I got a little tired of it and wanted to replace it with something else, so I started searching online for other fragrances. That's when I came across perfumeemporium, which had many user reviews on many different colognes. I would spend a lot of time reading about these fragrances, and then going to the Macy's to try them. Eventually, I came across Basenotes, and the rest is history. So that was how I first got into fragrances. So really, we have Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male to thank. :-)

Re: How old were you when you started to get interest in fragrances?

I developed a small interest last year at the age of 23. My dad always uses powerhouse fragrances like Quorum, Drakkar Noir and Aramis. I tried out Drakkar Noir, loved it and bought a 30ml bottle. When it ran out, I wanted to try something different, so I went to a department store and as soon as I smelled D&G The One, I just HAD to have it. I had no idea whatsoever about projection and longetivity at the time, all I knew was that it smelled great. After buying it, I started reading up on it and it lead me to BN. Had I read up on it earlier, I probably wouldn't have bought it lol.

That is when my obsession started and now I've got about 10 different bottles, plenty of decants, and many more samples .

Re: How old were you when you started to get interest in fragrances?

I started to wear fragrances when i was 10 but before, when i was a younger child, i used to "prepare" sort of brutal botanic concoctions mixing flowers and plants from the garden of my mum (really angry for that).

Re: How old were you when you started to get interest in fragrances?

Re: How old were you when you started to get interest in fragrances?

By age 12 I had a signature scent - Dante Original. I’d spend my allowance/paper route/odd job money on it. One day at the mall I had just bought a new bottle and was excitedly taking it out of the bag to show my best friend when it slipped out of my hands and smashed on the sidewalk. I looked down in shock and disbelief. The universe contracted and focused on that stain on the concrete, the glass shards, the severed label. It was an existential moment. “That’s the best-smelling sidewalk I’ve ever smelled,” my friend said.

Re: How old were you when you started to get interest in fragrances?

Re: How old were you when you started to get interest in fragrances?

Started to like frags when I was about 10. Brut, Jovan Musk, Mandate, Yardley Gold, Hallmark by Lentheric, Tabac! Hi Karate, Blue Stratos. Have always had 2 or 3 bottles, but wasn't until Sep 2012 at 36, that I started to collect. Now have 30 bottles,which is about the perfect number for me.

Re: How old were you when you started to get interest in fragrances?

I remember my mother kissing me goodnight from forever before she went to supper. Her hair was all pinned up and her long soft gloves caressed my face, her necklaces tickling my nose as she bent to my bedside. She always had a cloud of scent around her and it was left with me as she left. She was so glamorous and so beautiful. Long elegant evening dresses and long sparkly earrings.

I used to always make rose petal perfume in a jam jar as a child. My grandmother gave me my own very tiny bottle of Je Reviens by Worth when I was fairly young. I remember it had a tiny pouch it slipped into and it was blue and round and flat. It was my prize possession and I would open it and sniff and never use much. My mother later gave me Blue Grass by Elizabeth Arden. When I was a teenager my fathers business was cosmetics. I dabbled in aromatherapy, I collected vintage frags and eventually became a trainee perfumer by default. I still make tinctures all the time and brew my own ingredients, so nothing has really changed from the beginning. Perfume is just always there in everything I have ever done and probably ever will do.

My oldest son since about the age of five could and can recognise the right people from items of clothing left in our house, even relative strangers who have only been once or twice but had scent on. His nose is quite extraordinary and he can smell the tiniest of scent trails and then know what the smell is.

Re: How old were you when you started to get interest in fragrances?

15 yr old. My mom bought me my first "real" fragrance, which was CD Eau de Sauvage. (What a coincidence, i just received this week a bottle of Paco Rabanne vintage; the scent my mom's man friend used to wear that time in the 80's)

Re: How old were you when you started to get interest in fragrances?

When I was 14 I bought a bottle of Eddie Bauer cologne and wore Brut, and I absolutely loved them. It only took 15 years for me to come full circle and get into frags. But I guess now that I think about it the best memories of my youth are scent memories. Mom cooking roast dinner etc. The sense of smell has always moved me more than any other.

Re: How old were you when you started to get interest in fragrances?

I've been interested in fragrance since as a 6yr old I first saw the opening few minutes of Disney movie 'The Rescuers' when the classy lady mouse 'Miss Bianca' takes out an old bulb style bottle of perfume and spray it on herself, thereby announcing to the room that she is the classiest, most beautiful lady mouse in the room! ^_^ I know it sounds silly, but it was seriously at that moment that a love for the idea of perfume was born. When I was 14 I purchased my first bottle (a $10 rip off of angel at a showground!) which reminded me of my earlier interest and sparked some serious reading of perfume blogs and sites such as fragrantica and nowsmellthis.com. I begun doing trips to department store specifically for perfume smelling. Then, a few months ago, my boyfriend and I got talking about my interest in perfume, and he resolved to make me one! This first perfume (which he successfully gifted me a few weeks later) had lead to a full blown perfume making hobby/.obsession for both of us, and we now aim to make a range of perfumes to take to markets!

Re: How old were you when you started to get interest in fragrances?

when I was 18 I asked for something "different" at a Macy's perfume counter. I hated the "barbershop" smell, and the "woody ambers" that my father wore. The sales associate suggested Aramis 900. I just about did a back flip. LOL

Re: How old were you when you started to get interest in fragrances?

I'm thinking it was about the time I began to be interested in the opposite sex. In my junior high school they had dances for the students three times per year. The guys used to inappropriately douse themselves with Brut, Old spice, English Leather or British Sterling. It was all you could smell. Probably borrowed from their Dads medicine cabinet. I think I used my Dads Brut. The girls always had to start things off and ask the guys to dance first. That would break the ice and I don't remember any of the girls complaining about the gagging over use of aftershave. They were polite back then.

Rick

" I wanna have my kicks before the whole s--t house goes up in flames"

Re: How old were you when you started to get interest in fragrances?

Classic 'career' here
I'm sort of interested since early childhood (my dad's fougère & powerscents, ma's aldehydics and chypres, grandma's musks and orientals were always around and today I still have some half bottles of them among my vintages.) Fragrance wearer since the late 80s/early 90s. Building up a wardrobe since then. Lurking the forums since about 2006. Bought The Guide in 2009. Well that's it ...

Re: How old were you when you started to get interest in fragrances?

In my 30s.

1. No, never blind buy (I do, but do as I say, not as I do. I'm taking no responsibility for your fragrance gambling).
2. Get them both. You're a Basenoter and you know you're going to end up purchasing them both eventually.
3. Yes, it has been reformulated.
4. Looking for a signature scent? You've come to the wrong place.